West Africa Bourse to Switch to Real-Time Trading This Month

By Olivier Monnier -
Sep 5, 2013

West Africa’s regional stock market
said it will switch to real-time trading and extend opening
hours on Sept. 16.

The Bourse Regionale des Valeurs Mobilieres, or BRVM, will
trade from 9 a.m. to 2.30 p.m. compared with its current hours
of 8.30 a.m. to 10.30 a.m., Amadou Tidiane Bah, director of
operations at the exchange that’s based in Abidjan, Ivory Coast
commercial capital, said in an e-mailed response to questions.

The move will “favor a bigger amount of exchanges” as it
will give more “buying and selling opportunities” to market
participants, the exchange said in a statement.

The 39-member BRVM has climbed 22 percent this year,
outstripping the 8.3 percent increase in the Morgan Stanley
Frontier Market index over the same period. The BVRM serves
Benin, Ivory Coast, Niger, Mali, Togo, Guinea Bissau, Burkina
Faso and Senegal. France Telecom SA’s Senegalese unit, Sonatel,
is the biggest company on the exchange and has a market value of
1.8 trillion CFA francs ($3.6 billion).